Eric Boehlert: Washington Post keeps covering for GOP election lies
Washington Post keeps covering for GOP election lies
"Falsehood" nonsense
Eric Boehlert
Trump’s lies about the 2020 election continue to do extraordinary damage to our democracy, as his loyalists fan out across the country, demanding endless, bogus recounts and spreading wild lies about the American ballot process. The Washington Post recently detailed the deeply disturbing trend. But instead of being an honest truth-teller, the Post hid behind indefensible word-salad language, as part of the media’s long-running tradition of not calling Trump and his followers liars.
Timid news outlets like the Post are still hiding behind “falsehood” nonsense in 2021. This, as more stunned scholars are warning us that Republicans are clearly and deliberately putting American democracy at risk with their unprecedented and brazen attacks on free and fair elections.
The Post article originally ran under the headline, “Ballot Reviews Consume Trump as He Touts Falsehood of Stolen Election.”
Here’s how the Post described Trump’s lies:
• “baseless theories”
• “unsubstantiated claims”
• “baseless claims”
• “baseless theories”
• “alleging without evidence”
• “falsehoods”
• “The accusations”
• “Claims”
• “false allegations”
• “Allegations”
This is not the normal, instinctive language people use when telling the story about nonstop lies. This is the strained language reporters opt for when they want to avoid blunt adjectives to describe deeply disturbing Republican behavior that threatens democracy. The Post used “lie” just once in its 3,000-word article about lies.
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https://pressrun.media/p/washington-post-keeps-covering-for
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